I am not sure if it is the actual intent of the growing size of the completely fabricated world they have grafted onto the real world like a cybernetic conjoined twin, but it occurs to me that the "they" and the "us" may find mutual assurance in a certain nagging possibility.

What if we allow the Matrix to be built? That is to say, what if we don't find and sabotage the world sim before it is built, since it seems unlikely any of us is capable of doing (and willing to do) it anyway? What can we reasonably assume will happen? Here is a postulation:

Those who live in the fantasy world of infinite natural and capitalistic growth may be unwittingly drawn to a world that very much resembles our own but which is in fact an infinitely renewable fake world of artificial simulation. We would allow the Bankers, CEOs and NGO members who are paid 400 times their employees' salaries or who are consequent to billions of dollars of debt or funds to plug in to the simulation and manage their own strange affairs there with a company of simulated people and a world of simulated sycophants and whinging "useless eaters" just as they presently view the real world. They can fake-rape and fake-murder their simulated secretary and fake-hide the evidence from the simulated police. In this scenario, they can live their bloated psychopathic lives in peace, asleep, and breed simulated crack babies with their simulated partners (who may or may not be real women attracted to the rich-and-famous lifestyle also "plugged in") and allow them to die off peacefully, having lived their lives with no harm done to the real world and having brought no psychotic children into the world.

Meanwhile, those power-of-attraction zealots, Zeitgeist followers (already following the at least partially computer-generated Peter Joseph) Venus project fans and New Agers who believe in a coming Age of Aquarius time when we shall control everything with our minds and everything will be magical might be permitted to live in their fantasy world, albeit it a different section of the same software for the overpaid CEOs. In this simulated version of MORIAH or whatever the name of the world sim is now, the Fifth Dimensional Beings would be given a kind of Second Life world to inhabit and live out their perfect collectivist vision of harmonic poise with the great vibration. There will be plenty of resources for the technological Utopia because in their dimension, invasive technology will actually avoid the Matrix scenario and be completely perfect with human nature. Little do they realize that reality has pushed technology on its natural path: to a simulation of a world where the simulation did not take over their minds. But why should they realize it? They are happy in their floating astro-communes run with the power of pleasant computers that resist exploitation and corruption. Well, their dreams of such while they lay safely and unknowingly asleep in the Matrix.

The Zionists can be plugged in to an endless sleep to live out their insane fantasy of a totally Jewish, pseudo-Marxist "New World Order", where the Talmud and Torah are finally decoded and the great Metatron ascends to rule benevolently over all Jew kind, while feasting daily on the slave goyem's nurturing pig-like body parts. Of course, the less extreme Jews would be allowed to live their vegan alternative Kibbutz lifestyles in this scenario, as long as they support the basic supposition that the Nation of Israel must exist and is superior to all other forms of Jewish living. Twitching and smirking in their sleep, the tyrannical Rabbi leaders can live out their gray days arguing over which great writer best captured the human condition. Just not in the real world, in very engrossing and cybernetic conversations of virtually enhanced depth.

The population of the world dreaming of space travel, populating Mars and Venus and worlds beyond in fantastic starships based on errant NASA physics may actually live out their NASA-based Star Wars and Star Trek fantasies. They can be the first humans sent to colonize the Moon and write the first lunar pop song by the first lunar electric banjo band. They can have imaginary political dealings with exoraces, aliens and encounter all manner of amazing X-Files plots of intergalactic intrigue, or just sail in their Baron Von Munchausen cutters across the stars, seeking black holes and dark matter and parallel dimensions. They can campaign to end those terrible nuclear weapons and win! At least, all those awful nukes are dispensed with and celebrations across the 7 galaxies fire peaceful fireworks into the sky as the Orions finally agree to help the peaceful civilizations develop new spirit-based hyperdrives. What a wondrous imaginary world of materializer-machine fabricated food these human beings can dream about in their underground life-support Matrix pods while we eat real things we've grown in our real gardens.

Those who actually care for and recognize the beauty of this finite life, who love their communities and the precious resources of Earth, who are after the deep and real experience of being finite and living on the finite world we are born into, who see themselves as caretakers and stewards of the land and seas, which do not belong to them but which are "borrowed from our children" so to speak, who can live responsibly and peaceably with one another and reduce senseless turf wars, resource squabbles, feuds and pranks to their base minimum — these people would probably cling to their connection to Earth, reject the microchips and plugs, fight the Matrix and allow the other groups to peacefully plug in to their "infinite life resource" fantasies of immortality until they safely passed out of existence from our world.

As long as this Matrix is not compulsory, and as long as it continues to elude most people that the Matrix is the news is the military is the culture of the State is the World Government, it seems that in the near future we may find ourselves facing a different world soon. This world would "put away" and "put to rest" those who could never handle Earth life, who always felt they wanted and needed more from it, who ignored the barriers mother nature put on water, land, animal, human and plant life and got violent with us when we tried to point out that we should be living peaceably, responsibly and conservationally with one another as if people and life were precious commodities. Those who got greedy could be plugged into the Matrix for a while and shown the life of plenty they think they wish for. And if they emerge wishing to return to the sim, they could be permitted to do so.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the fake news stories, coupled with the average person's penchant for lifestyle consumerism will result in everyone of those sorts of people getting chipped and contentedly going to sleep for 100 years of solitude in their perfectly catered fabricated reality of seemingly infinite life packed into each moment.

you just reminded me of a funny thought I had the other morning. Isn't it fantastically ironic that the very sort of people - yes, like you and me - who reject and combat the FANTASY WORLD which we've been surrounded with by the 'over-imaginative' media (and by much of this world's 'scientific' community) are the ones who usually get labeled as "over-imaginative people, living in a fantasy-world of their own"?

I believe we are heading into the virtual world. Science fiction writers imagine us travelling to new lands through space travel. But I find that unlikely in comparison to going into virtual worlds.

15 years ago I got heavily into Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games(MMORPGs) and I came to understand some of the advantages of the virtual worlds.

Its the next phase of liberty. Where not only can you choose your own actions and destiny, within the physical, legal, property rights, etc., restraints of the real world. But you will be able to choose what type of world you live in & who you are in that world. Even the laws of physics can be different in virtual realms. And as the creators of the virtual worlds are in competition with each other, the rules, resource constraints, challenges, hidden secrets, items and artifacts are engaging for people.

There can be thousands and one day millions of worlds, so say you want to live in a communist utopia where everyone is equal and the game forces co-operation with your fellows. That world can exist. As can a world of brutal warlords vying for power.

The real world also presents limitations. Like I cannot travel to meet a friend in Europe in a few minutes. In a virtual world you can. In the real world not everyone can have a spectacular ocean front mansion. In a virtual world everyone can, as there are no hard resource constraints. (any constraints will be aspects of the game design).

In 2017 in the USA, all the major corporations are re-inventing themselves, as digital versions of their old selves. The leading corporations like Facebook are talking about 'augmented reality'. Eg.. you go to Spain but you don't speak Spanish. No problem your headphones are speaking in your language what the people are saying, and doing it in those peoples voices.

I find this a bit of a horrible fantasy, Hoi, although I see where you come from. It may (temporarily, before everything turns to shit again, because our human flaws and traits cannot be hidden under the virtual carpet) make for a livable society for the few, punishing the greedy, the fearful and the superficial, I guess. A bit along the lines of Pihlip Dick's "The Penultimate Truth". But it is only repeating the amoral take of our times, that only "few" get it, only "few" deserve it. I fundamentally disagree with this view. It is based on too much Pride and too much Misunderstanding on why we are on this planet. Either we all equally deserve the world, or none of us. If you want, I say this from a Christian standpoint. From the pages of René Girard...

The Pride of believing oneself to be unique, considering this uniqueness at first like an inestimable treasure to be seized, then like an unbearable burden which we desperately try to unload on others. The victimization of these others is an effort meant to move away from oneself the process of self-destruction to which, inevitably, brings the failure of Pride. ~ René Girard, The theater of Envy

I'd rather go in the direction of working together to make our society better, which means going back to simple moral standards and, yes, "religious" values, not in the sense of a religion that has all the answers concerning the age of our planet or the existence of galaxies, but in the much more present sense of a religion that daily moves us to decide for the better rather than the worse. We need it, it should be there, and it's missing.

I am sorry if mentioning religion upsets the secular views of the many rational thinkers on this forum, but the truth of the matter is that the dissolution of Christianity is leaving a gigantic gap of moral sense, which ultimately drains all intelligence out of people. We are left spending an inordinate amount of our brain time trying to make sense of things which had already been figured out for the best. Hence fantasies like "The Matrix", or that of robot sex dolls. While Islam is there only to ask for "submission", which at least brings relief to the overworking of the mind, and explains most of its current success (the rest of the conversions being due to the fantasies of fear emanating out of the people behind "Isis" and "Rita Katz").

As for the Matrix itself, I think it is deluded to think that the real world would be left to real people. If anything like the Matrix happened, it would be a military project and dedicated to the horrible, not to the good. The selection of those who escape it would happen in a much more unfair way. If I wanted to fantasize about dystopian futures (but I don't advise doing that anymore) it would be along these lines: the insertion into a virtual/fake reality would happen by tricking people into believing they are preparing for something completely different, for example an interstellar trip to a wondrous planet to colonize. This would take care of the multitude of real people who are ingenious, brave and adventurous (i.e. a nuisance for the pigs in charge), voluntarily sitting into "hybernation" beds only to be awaken in a virtual world, and never again in a real one...

But you know what? There is no global simulation, the idea is lame, and the reason is visible in the contradiction itself of the movie The Matrix: In the movie, we are told that humans are being used as a Duracell charge, while the truth is that humans consume energy. A lot of it. They don't produce any, they just disperse the part they don't use. Therefore, a Matrix system would use incalculable amounts of energy to keep the humans alive let alone feeding them an incredibly detailed simulated reality. Without going into the details of keeping individuals alive and attached to a machine, which just won't work. The whole thing would require heaps of energy which we just would never know how to harness. Easier for the pigs in charge would be to give us a couple of hours of pleasurable simulated reality before taking our lives peacefully. So let's forget about it, is what I say. Let's move away from the computers, the Internet, and forget about it. "We (might or might not) live in a simulation" is a bad meme which doesn't deserve any drum time.